Indian Contributions :: essays research papers

President BushThe strength of our Nation comes from its people. As the betimes inhabitants of this great land, the native peoples of northeasterly America played a unique(p) role in the shaping of our Nations history and culture. During the month when we celebrate Thanksgiving, we oddly celebrate their heritage and the contributions of American Indian and Alaska Native peoples to this Nation.The contribution of the American Indian to the English language is something that is often oerlooked. These words range from much(prenominal) common English words as "raccoon," "moose," "quahog" and "mackinaw" to literally thousands of place names "Chicago," "Tallahassee," "Cheyenne," "Hackensack," "Keokuk," "Rockaway," and more others. Historians point out that the first settlers on American shores discovered many things they had never seen before and which appeared nowhere else in the world. To get the Englis h words for an Indian objects the settlers simply spelled out as best they could in English their impression of the Indian sounds. Understandably in that location were often various spellings. An early spelling for skunk was "squuncke," a persimmon was first spelled "putchamins" and the Niagara was the "ongniaahra." One political word widely used today, "caucus," appeared in several of the Indian languages.A case can be do that contact with American Indians actually served as one of the catalysts for the Scientific transmutation in Europe. In 1571 King Philip II of Spain commissioned physician Francisco Hernandez to text file the medicinal seeds, plants, and herbs that the Aztec used. Spanish physicians exploring indigenous American cures soon published ternion textbooks based on this information including one on surgery.Although more than cc of the plants that American Indians (from North, Meso-, and South America) used as remedies became part of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, an official listing of all effective medicines, the originators of these remedies often remain unacknowledged.Freeze-dried food, syringes, rootbeer, rubberized clothing, beef jerky, and many of the tenets of the United States Constitution are only a few of the item-by-item inventions and original discoveries that American Indian people gave to the world.American Indian farming has had a significant effect on worldwide agriculture and economy. goofball Weatherford, in his book Indian Givers How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World, pointed out that Indians cultivated over 300 food crops, and contributed to the world three- fifths of the crops now in cultivation. The Indian farmers of North and South America gave the world corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, squash, chocolate, vanilla, papayas, persimmons, jicama, pecans, chilies, hickory nuts, peanuts, cassava, sunflower seeds, maple syrup, tapioca, and avocados.